


Your Fave Girl is a Problem

by TokyoDarjeeling



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Young Avengers
Genre: Behind the scenes of the super hero world, Gen, Kate Bishop: hero in training, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 09:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3482540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TokyoDarjeeling/pseuds/TokyoDarjeeling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How to create a hero, be a girl, search for trouble and find something to save. A re-adjusting of Kate Bishop's story, or What would happen if I was in Charge of the MCU.</p><p>“I’m Kate.”<br/>“Well, Kate, you just shot a man.”<br/>“Three. With blunt arrows. In a hospital. They’ll live.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. When Kate met Clint

Kate sits on a hospital bed propped against the wall of a corridor in A & E. She has sat here a while. She is warm and can feel her thighs being stuck together by sweat. Her feet are dangling across the edge, dressed in knee socks. She can feel her pulse beating in her busted lip.

She is fifteen years old.

In the bed next to hers lies a man knocked out cold. He has a black eye, is wearing sweats, and doesn't smell like alcohol.

I am not afraid of him, Kate decides.

A doctor comes by. He is less stressed than the nurse from earlier, but more dismissive. Their conversation goes like this:

“Kate, is it? Looks like you've been shook up a bit. Mugged, was it?”

It was the first thing that had come to mind when she filled in the first form. A different word for robbed.

“You haven’t broken anything, no concussion and that lip probably won’t even need stitches. You can get a salve for the bruises at any pharmacy. Pretty lucky, all in all.”

Yes, Kate is pretty. She isn't lucky.

Now the doctor frowns, and folds his arms.

“Kate. Are you listening to me? It might not feel like it, but you were very fortunate today. Young, pretty girls in school uniforms can’t go around alone at night. It’s a sick world, and it could have treated you a lot worse tonight.”

Kate’s mouth opens and closes. A breath gets stuck in her throat. A sudden rage yanks her back into the world, and then the doctor’s pat on her knee pushes her out of it again.

“I’ll have a nurse come clean your cuts up, then you’re free to go.”

The doctor walks away. Kate is alone again.

Someone should have called and asked for her now. She turned off her phone earlier so she wouldn't know when they didn't.

 

The man in the next bed stirs and moans. He’s in pain.

“Where the hell am I,” he mutters.

“Hospital,” Kate answers. Her voice sounds the same as before, unchanged.

The man groans.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Yeah,” Kate agrees.

A third person does too. There are screams coming from down the hall, part English, part Russian. The only part that Kate can make out is “Where the fuck did he go, bro?”

The man in the bed is on his feet in one second flat.

“Shit!” he curses loudly and darts past Kate and starts running in the opposite direction of the shouts.

Kate remains sitting, staring.

A group of three men in tracksuits run past her, following in bed man’s footsteps.

Kate looks around, whipping her head fast enough for her ponytail to smack her face. There is a shout for someone to call security, but it’s distant.

Kate grabs her gym bag. She stands up.

 

Two halls down, bed man skids to a halt in front of a pair of elevator doors. He slams the button, come on, come on. He’s dizzy, he’s unarmed, got nowhere left to run and he has been beat up enough times today, he thinks.

“Where d’you think you’re going, motherfucker?” a voice behind him calls.

The man turns, puts his hands up. Three of them, one of him.

“I said…” tracksuit number one says and pulls a gun from his trouser lining. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” tracksuit two snickers.

Bed man doesn't move. He’s been shot before. Didn't like it.

“Technically, that’s not what you said.”

And then tracksuit one is howling in pain. There is – there is an _arrow_ in his shoulder and he’s dropped the gun.

“Bro!” the others yell and rush forward, too surprised to look behind them. Then there are arrows in their knees.

Bed man blinks and stares with his mouth slightly open. He looks up and there is Bed girl, with a standard issue practice bow.

Kate was just on her way home from archery practice, just like every Wednesday.

Bed man makes a quick call. He runs past the tracksuits on the floor, shouts at Bed girl to follow.

She does.

Bed man is still limping, but he runs. Kate can’t tell if she should be limping, but she runs too.

Finally, she can run.

 

“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Bed man asks.

“Private school,” Kate answers.

They stop at a diner and order coffee by the bar. It’s good. Bed man has two full cups before he speaks.

“I’m Clint,” he says and reaches across the counter to grab the coffee pot. He drinks straight from it.

“I’m Kate.”

“Well, Kate, you just shot a man.”

“Three. With blunt arrows. In a hospital. They’ll live.”

“And so will I, amazingly.”

He clinks the pot against her cup.

“Thanks for saving my ass in there. You’re good shot.”

“Sometimes.”

“The only bad shots are the ones who never fires,” he chuckles.

Clint pulls his phone from his pocket, texts someone. Hers is still turned off.

They drink in silence for a few more minutes.

“My ride’s here,” Clint says abruptly, without looking up.

He empties the coffee pot and puts a twenty on the counter top.

“Will you be able to get home, Katie?” he asks.

Kate nods, Clint too.

He asks a waitress for a pen and writes an address in Bed-Stuy and a phone number on a napkin.

“If you ever want to work on your aim, just ask. I know a bit 'bout making arrows fly where you want them.”

Kate takes the napkin and turns to the window. A matte black car is standing outside.

“Where are you going now?” she asks.

“Home. Gotta feed the dog.”

Clint waves, and walks out to the car. Kate watches it drive away.

Clint wasn't pretty. But today he got lucky.

Kate folds the napkin, puts it in her gym bag. Gently drags a finger along an arrow inside.

 

She’s decided.

The fuckers will be shot.

She will only miss the shots she never takes.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kate Bishop is the hero we've been waiting for, and will continue to wait for in the MCU. I'm just passing the time. Expect future short episodes of what Kate was doing while we were watching white men on the big screen.


	2. You and I are just walking disasters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Keep working on your aim, Katie. It’s leaning a bit to the left. That’s all it takes for them to hit you before you hit them. Don’t let them.”
> 
> I am not afraid of him, Kate decided a long time ago. I am afraid for him, she decides now.
> 
> “Don’t let them fucking near you, you hear me?”
> 
> PLEASE NOTE: This chapter was updated July 26, 2015.

No matter how many plans you make or how well thought out they are, no matter how many precautions you take, how hard you train, how hard you work at improving yourself… bad things will happen. Things you have no control over, that aren’t your fault and that you cannot protect yourself against.

Like aliens attacking New York.

“Are you fucking seeing this?”

Kate is squatting on the floor in a Cold War-era bomb shelter no one really believed existed at Hawthorne Academy. She’s locked inside with way too many people. So no, she’s not fucking seeing this but she can hear it well enough. Explosions and screams, but mostly hysterical crying.

She is sixteen years old.

She can hear it perfectly fine, sometimes it’s so loud that she can’t tell if the vibrations on the floor are simply caused by the noise itself. She can hear the havoc outside, that’s how they follow the disastrous events. And when they can’t hear it any more, when there has been a time of prolonged silence, Kate are among the first to get out of there, out of the basement and onto the street – she sees it, a thick and grey image of the once familiar street and she’s almost there when the blow hits. It doesn’t actually hit her physically, but she’s too close anyway. Kate is on the ground and she can feel the noise vibrating through her whole body, but she doesn’t hear it, doesn’t hear…

By the time an army troop arrives and declares that the area has been secured, Kate is hearing things. Echoes, static, voices. It is almost dark outside and she heads home, for lack of a better idea. Through an utterly unequal amount of luck, the Upper East Side seems mostly unharmed while everything below Downtown is in shambles. Like the time that army experiment went wrong a few years back and wrecked Harlem – that too avoided the richer neighborhoods below. Kate isn’t very much into conspiracy theories, but come on.

In her bed that night, it strikes her that she should probably check in on Clint. He replies to her text unusually fast (normally he is overpowered by his anxiety for spellcheck, or something) to say that he’s “OK.”

Kate watches the news and sees the team of “super heroes” that fought off the invasion, notes that there is an archer among them but makes herself not focus on it. Instead she snickers at the hilarious amounts of goodwill Stark Industries are going to get out of this. Her ears are ringing, but she’s had a shower and a warm meal and she’s alive. This time, she is lucky.

 

Six months passes. Kate almost fails economics and science. She wins herself a spot at Regionals, and still Clint doesn’t show. It’s the third competition he’s missed.

What an asshole, Kate thinks but doesn’t text him that.

Instead one day, he asks her to come out to the apartment. The door’s already open when she reaches his floor.

“Damn Barton,” she says and unwillingly cringes. “Rough night?”

She wishes she could take it back almost immediately. She meant it, he did just look hung over at first, but he is most definitely sober. Eyes red shot, not focusing, fidgety, the apartment a well-organized mess – things are Not Good.

“Rough year,” Clint responds, no offence taken. He scratches the back of his head, sitting on a high chair by the bar. Lucky is at his feet, staring at Kate.

I know, she nods, he’s not okay.

“I haven’t seen you around recently,” she starts, poking the kitchen rug with the tip of her shoe.

“Congratulation on Regionals,” Clint croaks.

“Thanks.”

“I’m going out of town for a while. Need someone to watch Lucky. Neighbor’s kid’s got an allergy, can’t take him in anymore.”

Kate nods.

“I got you a key.”

It’s on the counter top. Kate takes it, adds it to her key chain.

“He hasn’t taken his walk yet.”

Clint doesn’t meet her eye, stares out the window instead. Lucky stands, gives Kate a meaning look.

She takes his leash, puts it on, waits by the door, not saying anything.

“Clint,” she starts.

“Keep working on your aim, Katie. It’s leaning a bit to the left. That’s all it takes for them to hit you before you hit them. Don’t let them.”

I am not afraid of him, Kate decided a long time ago. I am afraid for him, she decides now.

“Don’t let them fucking near you, you hear me?”

Kate only nods, then says “Yes” out loud as soon as she finds her voice. She knows she hears it, because she knows she says it.

She tugs Lucky’s leash, lets him lead the way out into the hallway. She stops herself with a hand on the door frame.

“But Clint?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t stay too far away either.”

“I like a bit of distance.”

“Don’t overindulge yourself, jerk.”

Kate leaves the apartment, closes the door behind her. By the time she’s reached the bottom step, Lucky abruptly halts and Kate realizes she is crying.

Been a long time coming. Screw you, Barton.

 

One night the throbbing pain in her ears gets bad enough that she cries. Kate always tries so very hard not to cry. Her mother drags her downstairs to knock on Dr. Patel’s door at 1 AM. The doctor frowns at her when she takes a look.

“How long?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” Kate tells her.

“How long have you been fine?”

Next morning, Kate misses another history exam. She’s at an ear, nose and throat clinic instead, being told she shouldn’t necessarily think of it as a loss. People have a funny misconception over what that word means, she mutters to herself (she knows she can’t hear it, but she knows she said it).

Yeah, it’s not a loss. Skiing season rolls around, and Kate learns that. She learns it harder than she could have imagined, and here she was thinking she already knew what losing a part of you felt like. But not like this. Not like this.

 

Kate goes over to Bed-Stuy every day after school and in between practice sessions. She starts staying over on the weekends. It’s quiet, makes her relax, makes studying just a little bit easier. There is no cello or piano there, reminding her why she can’t play (at least she doesn’t think she can, and she doesn’t want to). There are no medals or ribbons, reminding her why she can’t compete (at least not in the same classes as before). And, because Barton is obviously a schmuck, there is only one mirror for her to watch her reflection, new and improved with hearing aids, only one mirror to stupidly practice signing her own name in front of.

She starts fixing the place up a bit. Not a lot, not like she’s his damn maid or something, just the things that needs mending, looking after. She hangs out with the neighbors. She gets the neighbor’s kid a proper doctor’s appointment and some anti-histamine, so that he can still pet Lucky when they meet in the hall.

Kate gets curtains. She buys proper coffee beans from the same roasters the Bishop’s usually shop at (used to shop at), and a coffee grinder. It’ll be a nice surprise for Clint when he comes home.

He doesn’t.

 

During this whole time, Kate could not care less about aliens. Or conspiracies, or doubts over how ethical this S.H.I.EL.D. thing really is. Billy Kaplan from Hebrew school cares enough for both of them (for the entire class really) and it’s the only thing he talks to her about, except for when he needs Kate’s help with his stupid love life. Now that’s a topic Kate is way more interested in.

When Kate goes over to Billy’s house, on the _other_ Upper side, she puts on her sneakers and runs through the park. As fast as she can. Not because it’s quicker and not because she’s scared, not because she’s trying to outrun anyone. She runs because once you’ve built up the momentum of speed, it’s that much easier to jump kick someone coming at you, be they man or alien.

That is where she is, at the Kaplan’s, when the _Scandal_ marathon is interrupted by a news cast of another alien invasion, in London this time, almost eighteen months to the day after New York.

“Again?” Kate whines and pops the lid of a new tub of ice cream.

“I’m telling you it’s gonna keep happening! It’s happened plenty before! We only hear about it when S.H.I.E.L.D. can’t get there before CNN does!” Billy explains for the umpteenth time.

“Thank the heavens for mainstream media,” Kate says and takes a scoop of B&J. “What I don’t get is why these guys tries to get back at Asgard by attacking _us_. Who do they think they are, the America of outer space?”

Billy is exasperated.

“These aren’t Chitauri!” he fumes. “They- come on, they look _completely_ _different_!”

“Bet it doesn’t feel very different to the meager earthlings they just crumpled,” Kate mutters and prays that Teddy Altman, when Billy finally dares to ask him out, is more interested in this than she is. She could lose aliens completely.

 

A month later, Kate drives her vespa to Brooklyn, with two brim filled bags tied to it. It’s good to be driving again. It’s Christmas break and her dad has gone skiing in Vancouver. Kate blatantly refuses to join and the (there’s no other word for it) anger she feels makes the Bishop penthouse feel suffocating. So she emigrates westward and decides to set up shop in Bed-Stuy.

She stops at the top of the stairs and almost drops the bags. The door is open. Lucky comes and peaks at her through the frame, happy and excited.

Most people would say it’s impossible, but Lucky’s canine smile falters at the look on Kate’s face and he retreats back inside, tail between his legs. Dumping her bags on the landing, Kate follows.

Clint is at the bar, slouching off a chair, drinking coffee from a cup. Coffee she bought, a cup she washed. He is clean shaven, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, looks healthy and a hundred times better than last time she saw him.

He’s everything Kate wants him to be, most specifically: here.

And she’s so mad she could scream.

“Hi Katie Kate,” he greets her and points to an empty cup in front of him. “Made enough for you too.”

He knew she’d be here, he knows she’s been here all along, like he asked her to, waiting for him.

Kate does scream, and Lucky whelps in alarm.

Clint raises his eyebrows and says “Close the door, boy” without losing eye contact with Kate. Lucky does as instructed and pushes the front door shut, then lies down in front of it whining, as if to say “None of you are leaving until you sort this out, okay.”

“How you’ve been, Kate?” Clint asks.

Kate holds her fists down and bites her lip.

“ _Fine_. I have been here, a whole year, and I have been _fine_.”

“Good,” Clint nods. “I thought you would be. And I knew I wouldn’t be, so I had to go away for a little while. For me.”

Clint takes a sip of coffee.

“I had an accident at work. Really messed me up. There was this guy… and then, y’know, I felt taken advantage of, on top of just the physical things.”

Kate eases her tight jaw a bit. He doesn’t say it, but it’s there, an implied question, can she relate?

Kate can.

“You felt dirty,” she says quietly not looking at him. “Used.”

“Yeah. And I needed to fix that, to… treat it, y’know.”

“You looked bad.”

“I was bad.”

Kate walks over to the counter, pours herself that cup he offered earlier.

“We’re out of coffee,” she says.

“We,” Clint repeats.

Kate forgives him. She understands. He did the right thing, what he needed to do, whatever it was, whatever had happened. He did what he needed and she shouldn’t feel betrayed, can’t feel betrayed.

And yet she does.

“I needed you,” is what she wants to say, what she plans to say. “I needed you to be here, to talk to me, to show off your ridiculous arrows, to make me walk your dog, to practice ASL with, to buy you brand groceries you can’t afford, I needed _you_.”

What comes out is:

“My mom died.”

All the air goes out of Clint and his voice is breaking when he asks her.

“In the battle of New York?”

Kate looks at his panic stricken eyes, eyes that look like they’re to blame.

“No,” she answers. “In a stupid skiing accident last winter. So now daddy’s skiing in Vancouver instead, my sister’s in Bermuda and the menorah sits in the goddamn attic.”

“And you’re in Brooklyn,” Clint says.

“And I’m in freaking Bed-Stuy!” Kate laughs and she starts feeling a little less abandoned. Clint is still here.

“I was gonna stay here over break. You could’ve picked a better time to come home, you know.”

Clint shrugs.

“There’s the couch.”

“ _You_ can sleep on the couch.”

“Fine.”

 

Come Christmas Eve, Kate is not at a black tie event or a ball with other millionaires, she’s on a roof in Brooklyn hitting beer cans on another roof with a miniature cross bow.

“Do you really have nowhere else to be, Barton? Something more holiday oriented?”

“Same to you, Bishop,” Clint replies and knocks down a Budweiser can.

“I don’t celebrate Christmas, I _make appearance_ s at Christmas parties for stupid social reasons, and they are always way duller than this.” Kate hits a Heineken.

“Well, my work Christmas parties are the worst, so,” Clint replies and takes the bow from her hand to reload it. “I’ve given them up.”

“What the hell do you even do, anyway,” Kate asks. “I thought you were ‘freelancing.’”

“Mhm,” Clint says. “But I’m thinking of joining this… team more permanently.”

“Good luck, Barton. Hope they throw better parties.”

“Thanks, Kate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! The Avengers and Thor 2, through the eyes of Kate Bishop. I went with the time line that the movies are set when they were released, so spring 2012 and autumn 2013 respectively. I also made Kate Jewish, if that wasn't clear. :)
> 
> The chapter title is from The Wombats song of the same name, which is pretty damn near perfect for Clint and Kate. I happily discovered that I'm not the only one who thinks so: http://brandnewuniverse.tumblr.com/post/110295249920/and-flowers-might-wilt-when-we-walk-past-and
> 
> ETA: I have edited chapters 2 & 3 as of July 26, 2015 to make Kate hearing impaired following the battle of the New York. It'll keep playing a part in the story for future chapters. I've done some research but if you have personal knowledge/experience of deafness/hearing impairment and notice a mistake on my part, please let me know!


	3. Your body is a weapon, love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can’t stop a weapon of mass destruction, only point it in the right direction. Where that is, these past few days has taught him better than ever, he doesn't know.
> 
> PLEASE NOTE: This chapter was updated July 26, 2015.

“So … what’s our angle on this?”

It is a serious question. Maybe Kate should find less glee in other people’s misfortunes, but sometimes they are bizarre enough that you have to snicker.

The others don’t find it funny. At all. The editor looks like he’s about to cry.

Well. Kate should know by now that things can always get worse, and they almost always do.

She’s eighteen years old and has had plenty of experience of that herself.

 

Leaving the office early that day (after the editor had solemnly sent them home as if to _mourn_ ) Kate sends a text.

“Make sure he’s got plenty of Kleenex, ok?”

“Already covered. Out getting ice cream now,” Teddy replies, being exactly the perfect boyfriend Kate always hoped he’d be. The kind that’s there for his heartbroken partner when his childhood comes crashing down as Captain America is arrested for treason and murder.

In comparison I can’t be _that_ big a disappointment, Kate thinks to herself.

 

A few months ago, when her classmates were in the business of outshining each other with the price tags of their prom gowns, Kate was called to the counselor’s office together with her dad, who three summons later actually attended.

“Kate, your situation has gotten quite out of control. At this stage, the Academy cannot let you graduate.”

Derek Bishop huffed and Derek Bishop puffed, but nothing could change the fact that his younger daughter was being held back a year due to failed (or never begun) classes and bad grades, not even his farfetched attempt at blaming this on Kate’s “handicap”. This could not be, it simply could not, especially not when his older daughter was about to graduate magna cum laude from Columbia, and with a wealthy fiancé to boot! Kate thinks that is at least part of why exactly this could be: the academic achievements of the family were already achieved elsewhere. She had prioritized other things and she was fine with that decision. Did her more good than bad.

Of course she was going to graduate, she promised. Of course she would take this opportunity and get a hold of herself the coming year. Thank you for your consideration, et al. But before that came along, a summer break was to be had. A very, very long summer break where Kate was put to work-as-punishment ( _me, an heiress??_ ) in the family business and so ended up spending her days in the conference room occupied by the research team for _The Captain America Centennial Biography_ which was due in 2018. Through the years Bishop Publishing had produced a number of biographies on related subjects, and of course one not that long ago when the national hero rose from the dead (“A way too quickly put together hack of a job, rushed to be on the shelves before the buzz died down, resulting in sloppy writing, a high number of factual errors and generally poor research. Would not recommend.” – review on goodreads.com by wicced_billy97). That would all now be topped off with the biography of biographies, and Kate was to contribute to that cause, as would Billy and Teddy, although without pay and authorization.

The publishing world was not for her, Kate decided pretty quickly as she spent her days checking references and taking orders from her frantic editor who frankly put Kaplan/Altman both to shame in terms of fanboying.

“I want to get him a Valium prescription,” she laments to her coworkers.

“He is one of the foremost Cap scholars in the country,” they remind her.

“Yes, and like everybody else working on this book, he has never even spoken to the guy,” Kate reminds them.

 

It is not a happy group who confer the next day, and the despair only grows as the great Captain escapes, brings down S.H.I.E.L.D. and, as is custom to supers being heroic, causes millions of dollars’ worth of property damages.

“What do we do now?!” the group yell to each other, to people on the phone, to no one in particular.

“Is Stark going to pay for that, or …” Kate wonders aloud instead.

“ _LEAVE, BISHOP_.”

But not before she’s been tasked with setting as many DVRs she can get her hands on, on every news channel she’s heard of, to make sure not a single second of news coverage slips the team by as they try to make sense of this mayhem.

Kate then relocates to the Altman residence, just in time for the total archives of S.H.I.E.LD. to arrive on the net.

Gold mine!

Mine field.

 

Kate doesn’t save a single Steve Rogers related file on her company laptop, but plenty else. She reads in horror, in bewilderment and in hair-pulling levels of worry.

Fuck, Barton, fuck, fuck, fuck.

“This Project Insight is _insane_. Have the actual lists been put up to? That’s a death sentence for millions of people!”

“They brought the hellicarriers down, if we’re damn lucky the lists went down with them.”

“I don’t even think that makes a difference! They must have other lists that they probably just put together to a big one. And how did they find all these people? As long as they still have the means to do that, it doesn’t matter how many lists go lost, they can just remake them!”

And then Teddy says,

“Do you think we are on that list?”

Kate looks up.

“What do you mean? Why would we be?”

Teddy looks glum. He turns to Billy.

“Didn’t you tell her?”

But Kate has already gone back to scrolling and doesn’t listen to whatever they say next. She reaches for her phone.

Barton, _fuck_.

_Not delivered._

_Not delivered._

_Not delivered._

_The number you’ve called cannot be reached._

_The number you’ve called cannot be reached._

_The number you’ve called cannot be reached._

 

Until three days later, when her phone rings.

“Clint’s back,” a little boy tells her. “He just came in a few minutes ago.”

Bless neighborhood watch, Kate thinks.

She breaks more traffic regulations and speed limits than she’s done in her whole life until now and is at the door banging it before Lucky can start barking. The subway would have been quicker perhaps, but she can’t ride that anymore. It always ended with her beating some groping creep up, which greatly upset all her trainers who insisted that it was ruining her hands. Still gotta work on her aim, then.

“Clint, what the hell,” Kate whines as she’s let inside, with no question to why she’s there.

“You knew, Bishop, you’re too smart to pretend otherwise,” he just sighs and puts coffee on. Kate half expected the apartment to be all packed up, or filled with boxes, but it looks exactly the same.

“I was being politely ignorant!”

“You’d make a horrible spy that way.”

“I never wanted to be a spy!”

“Then what _do_ you want?”

Kate hesitates, because she’s never put it to words. And it’s definitely not something that she’s been contemplating recently, with more burning matters on her mind. Clint realizes that he’s never thought about it before either and he wishes he hadn’t asked.

Here she stands in front of him, the best bowman he’s ever met even if she’s a spoiled little rich kid, “politely ignorant” and as hopeless as she’s brilliant. A teenage girl who’s failing school because she’s too busy delivering vigilante justice to bad guys in tracksuits on the streets and oh God.

Here she stands and Clint just can’t watch this happen all over again.

“You are not a weapon, Katie,” he says sternly.

“I can still die by one,” she defies him. “This is my best shot not to. The only thing I can do to make sure it doesn’t happen to others, either. What else am I supposed to be?”

Kate is just a girl. She’s nothing like Nat.

She’s everything like him. And what else are the pair of you supposed to be, Barton?

“I need to leave town a bit,” he sighs.

“Of course.”

“And before they find the building …”

“I haven’t read anything about it anywhere yet.”

“Good. I might have to put it in your name, though.”

“I always figured property was a better business for me anyway.”

They’re not talking about what they are, just what they’re going to do. And Kate still isn’t sure of either things.

The coffee’s done, and they sit on the roof drinking it.

“Where are you gonna go?” Kate wonders

“I don’t know. I have a place. A farm.”

She snorts. “Yeah, right.”

“You can ask me things, y’know,” he offers. “It doesn’t matter, I don’t work there anymore.”

Clint pauses.

 “Hell, I don’t even have health care anymore.”

“I can’t put you on my plan, but I promise I’ll pay your bills. Don’t stack ‘em up too much though,” Kate says and pokes him in the arm. She doesn’t have many questions yet.

“You can’t do this, you know,” Clint says quietly, tries again because he has to. “You’re not that stupid.”

“If you wanna talk stupid, then this isn’t even close. Busting your eardrums and not doing anything about it until it’s too late, _that’s_ stu-“

“Hey, Kate, no. Don’t blame yourself for that.”

Kate shrugs. She’s not blaming herself, for anything.

“You can’t do this, you know,” Clint repeats.

 

“I can’t not,” Kate whispers back, slowly accepting that they’re spending more time talking about her than him. “I didn’t put myself in that situation. But I’m the only one who could get me out. And this was the only way.”

Kate hasn’t told Clint what happened the night they met. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t understand that things _can_ happen, things that make spears out of girls, or destroys them. It was one or the other to Kate, and it was one or the other to other people Clint have met, as well as to him.

“They did that a lot. S.H.I.E.L.D. and others in the same business, made human weapons.”

“I know.”

Kate looks Clint in the eye.

“But I already was one, before they got to get to me. If I were on those lists, it wasn’t because of them.”

Clint hears both the statement and the question in that sentence.

“I don’t know if you were, Katie. So many people, so many lists. Couldn’t check ‘em all.”

“But the thought did hit you.”

“You’re not exactly a harmless civilian, Bishop.”

“And neither are you.”

“The tenants won’t notice the difference.”

“Same old landlord, right?”

Clint laughs.

“You don’t know a single thing about rental housing,” he says.

“Neither did you, _farm boy_ , and it worked out. Also I am way smarter than you.”

“I think you’ll do alright.”

“I hope you and your team do, too.”

 “I guess we’re all freelance now,” Clint chuckles.

“I’m sure you can show ‘em the ropes,” Kate says and pats him on the shoulder. “But if you ask me, you won’t be a free agent before long. Avengers Incorporated, or whatever. Stark employees, maybe.”

“Rue the day,” Clint says bleakly.

“You’d get your healthcare back,” Kate offers as a small consolidation.

“You’re too optimistic, Bishop.”

But then again, maybe that is a side effect of being a self-made woman, instead of a manufactured weapon. She choose this herself, which was more than Clint, Nat and many like them did. He can’t stop Kate. You can’t stop a weapon of mass destruction, only point it in the right direction. Where that is, these past few days has taught him better than ever, he doesn’t know.  

“Do you know,” he says and gets up, “what a boomerang arrow is?”

Kate stares straight ahead and deadpans,

“It sounds like a pretty one-way concept.”

“It comes back to you.”

“I change my mind: it sounds suicidal.”

“Not like that!”

“Self-destructive then, at least.”

“That comes with the job.”

“It comes even more _without_ the job,” Kate points out.

“And then here we are.”

Kate takes that as her cue. She stands up in front of him, arms folded, determined not to let the conversation derail once more.

“You worked for some pretty sketchy people, Clint. I’ve read a bunch of creepy files the last couple of days, and, because I have read them together with teenage boys I have also _been_ read the really yucky and gruesome parts. Repeatedly.”

Clint doesn’t deny it. S.H.I.E.L.D. was always sketchy, that much is true, but:

“It wasn’t always so obviously bad. And I’m not Hydra.”

He adds the last part because he feels it needs to be stated for the record, not because he actually thinks that Kate suspects him of it.

“I’m aware of that, my Nazi radar isn’t that off,” Kate scruffs. “You’ve got to admit though, that it wasn’t exactly a moral high ground kind of place even before that unfortunate hostile takeover.”

“Of course not,” Clint shrugs and adds, “which is why I’m a little thankful it’s over to be honest.”

“So you can go back to wearing spandex in the name of justice again,” Kate purrs and raises one eyebrow.

“ _Hey_.”

“Oh drop the act Barton, I swear one of the first things Billy did was to look up the records of the costume department. We, the public, _knows_.”

Now more than ever, Clint wants to hide at his farm and never come back.

 

Even though she has now begun her property career and actually has a new job, Kate can’t exactly tell her father that, and so is still on the research team. She comes in on a Saturday even, to secretly bring Billy with her (she’s trying out the spying business, or something) so they can look over things together. Billy takes one look at the complete mess of documents, S.H.I.E.L.D. and otherwise, sprawled across the desk, and starts sorting them meticulously.

Kate, on the other hand, walks to the bookshelves where they keep all the printed material they have. She looks over the shelves of books from other publishers, i.e. those she doesn’t already know by heart, and eventually her eyes fall on a box on the floor labeled “trash.” (It is Kate’s favorite.) She places it on the center table and looks through it; mostly conspiracies with psychedelic cover designs. She stops at an especially ridiculous looking paperback on a subject they haven’t actually been able to find that many new, gruesome details on.

She reads aloud on the cover before she throws it over to Billy.

“’Where is Bucky? The Mystical ‘Death’ of Captain America’s Right hand Man and the Unfathomable Fate of James Barnes.’ Do we think S.H.I.EL.D. had something to do with that too?”

Billy lets out a hollow laughter.

“Anything’s possible, I guess.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we've reached CA:TWS! I have at least one more chapter planned out, but then I'll wait until Age of Ultron before posting anything further, simply because I need more canon to work with. 
> 
> Chapter title is another The Wombats song, which is even more Clint & Kate than the last. 
> 
> Oh, and if anyone's got any questions or comments you can also leave them to me over at tumblr, where I'm also TokyoDarjeeling.
> 
> ETA: I have edited chapter 2 &3 as of July 26, 2015 to make Kate hearing impaired following the battle of the New York. It'll keep playing a part in the story for future chapters. I've done some research but if you have personal knowledge/experience of deafness/hearing impairment and notice a mistake on my part, please let me know!


	4. Billionaires I met and disliked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who cares what Fox says, a guy in a metal suit who can fly looks pretty cool to twelve year old Kate.

The world of the disgustingly rich was not a big one. Otherwise it wouldn’t be the 1%, right? It was like an inbred small town, unfathomably romanticized by self-congratulating people within it. This town existed on a national level, where different areas were like neighborhoods in constant competition which each other.

The Bishops belonged to the New York block of the town, and as all other wealthy New Yorkers they saw themselves as the crème de la crème of the 1%. The 1‰.

Of the number of people who were deemed unworthy to be accepted into this circle, even if they had a residence in the city and spent time there, there was one in particular that Kate’s family could not stand.

The Bishops hated Tony Stark.

 

“Is there really nothing more newsworthy happening today? At all?” Dad asks and gestures with his martini glass towards the television. He’s got one arm thrown over the back of the sofa, his legs crossed with the right one bumping up and down along to a non-existent tune (middle aged millionaire kicking it back in his thousand dollar sofa.jpg). Fox News is on.

“There is always something more worthy than Stark,” Mom muses from the kitchen where she’s pouring herself another glass of wine. It has been a stressful day.

“Uh, he is so _bourgeois_ ,” Susan sighs.

Kate looks up from their game of chess on the floor.

“But,” she asks, contemplating the meaning that Susan is giving the term, “aren’t we that too?”

“Not like that!” Susan says with teenage defiance.

“No, honey, not like that. We don’t kill people for a living, we publish books. There’s a difference.” Mum smiles and nods, as if that difference would be unclear.

“I thought that was the opposite of what he did. At least that’s what he just said, on the news,” Kate objects and jerks a thumb in the TV’s general direction. “He saved a bunch of kids, from terrorists that kept _him_ hostage. And then like, saved his company.”

“God, you are so _dumb_ ,” Susan says, even though she hasn’t won a chess game against her younger sister for almost two full years. Kate has kept track.

“It is Fox dear, and you mustn’t believe everything they say,” Mum adds diplomatically.

Who cares what Fox says, a guy in a metal suit who can fly looks pretty cool to twelve year old Kate.

 

Maybe it is a teenage thing, this dislike/competition thing with Stark, because a few months and a birthday later Kate drastically changes her opinion. Although, so does Susan, who is still a teenager at this point.

They are at the … third? Fourth? _Third_ charity gala they’ve attended that fall. It is only September. Kate wishes that the funds raised matched her boredom, but they never do. Rich people only share normal-income people’s views of what constitutes a ‘large amount’ when it comes to charitable donations, resulting in them being even bigger cheapskates at these events than otherwise.

Kate knows not to trust Fox, so this time she has turned to The Wall Street Journal. And they have proven that without a doubt, Stark is richer than they are. Way richer. She narrows her eyes every time he passes through her peripheral vision, as if challenging him to give more than whatever he actually gave to be here tonight. Come on Stark, don’t be so… bourgeois. (Kate still thinks the word might mean something else.)

Soon however, Kate is narrowing her eyes for a different reason.

“I don’t feel so good,” she says and looks down at her shoes, which she is pretty sure she cannot walk another step in. She’s so… high above the ground in them.

“I don’t feel anything,” Susan complains and downs her glass of Coke. She smacks her lips and then freezes, looking at her empty glass.

“Kate,” she says.

“Mhmm.”

“Can I… can I have your glass, please?”

“Not finished with it. Get your own.”

“Oh my God.”

Susan grabs the glass out of her hand and smells it, her eyes going wide with “I am in over my head and don’t know what to do in this situation because I am a mere child” fear.

“Shit. I mixed them up.”

“You did what?” Kate asks, still staring at her shoes. So, so far down.

“I’m going to tell Hughes to bring the car around,” Susan promptly decides. “You stay right here.”

“We can go home?” Kate asks, loud and joyous. “Already?”

“Yes, we …” Susan frowns and takes hold of Kate’s arm. “Hold this,” she dictates and places her hand firmly around the back of a chair. “And stay put.”

Kate just nods, suddenly remembering that she doesn’t feel very good.

 

Next morning Kate wakes in, what she thinks is, her sister’s bathroom. She thinks she’s in the bathtub, but there’s no water. There’s a pillow too. Strange.

“What happened?” she says out loud, and her voice comes out raspy and groggy, slurry enough that she is a bit unsure if she’s really said what she thinks she’s said.

“Uuuuh,” Susan’s voice sounds in answer. She’s sitting on the floor next to the tub. “I’m so sorry, Kate, I… I switched our glasses last night and there was rum in my Coke. A… a lot of it.”

“Whaddya mean rum,” Kate says. What’s rum? (She usually knows.) Why was it in Susan’s glass? (She could figure that out, under normal circumstances.)

Kate sits up with a start and calls out,

“Did someone spike your – _my_ drink?”

She shouldn’t have moved so quickly.

“Shh! No!”

Susan looks annoyed, then apologetic.

“I asked for it.”

Kate squints at her.

“Why? The bartenders know us, they know how old we are. We see them like, once a week.”

Kate’s intelligence is returning, however briefly.

Susan shifts awkwardly.

“Well I… got someone else to order it for me.”

Kate is confused. Who? Who at that gala did not know exactly who Susan was and how old? Who would do that?

Susan rolls her eyes and sighs, like only a high school-er with a thirteen year old and very innocent sister can.

“I just asked for a drink, nothing else. Told him, well – implied I was older, obviously. The whole night was just so boring, but it would be cool if Iron Man bought you a drink, wouldn’t it? How did you get so wasted from one drink anyway?!”

Kate realizes why she’s in a bathtub, because she needs to puke. Now. It is not the first time that night, she realizes a few seconds later.

God, she really hates Tony Stark.

 

“Not a weapon, eh? Not. A. Weapon. Well, well, well!”

“How the tables have turned… not,” Kate murmurs into her cereal. Dad’s glee is too overwhelming this early in the morning.

“It’s not a joke,” Susan says, and she’s right.

“Of course it is!”

“People _died_ , dad.”

“Due to dangerous weapons, as is usually the case.”

Susan looks affronted. She’s right, even if it is for the wrong reasons: to defend Stark, which, really, wasn’t going to go down well at this breakfast table no matter what the circumstances regarding last night’s incident in Queens were.

Kate sighs, and mentally kicks herself beforehand.

“The problems only started once you took the guy out of the suits, though. The “prosthesis” went haywire,” she says and Susan looks pleasantly surprised.

Their mother puts her tea cup down.

“You know,” she says contemplatively, “this might be the first time I have ever heard of matters getting worse when you remove the man from the situation. Huh.”

Her daughters both choke on their breakfasts laughing, while her husband pouts and tries to interject with,

“Had he left the suits to military men in the first place we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”  

 

A week later, Eleanor returns home shaken from her weekly stint at a Harlem soup kitchen with her oldest daughter, pours herself a big glass of wine and turns to her husband and states with determination,

“In my recent experience, military men prove no less dangerous than civilian men and the less toys they are left to play with, _the better_.”

She downs the glass in successive gulps, while Susan attempts to figure out which buttons to press on their new espresso machine. It has been a stressful day.

Kate is let in by the doorman half an hour later, and immediately notices the raised voices from the kitchen (where her mother is animatedly contradicting the “facts” stated by the news anchor on the TV regarding some military accident in Harlem).

When she gets there, Susan has managed to produce and drink at least two espressos, and is watching her mother, or at least trying to (her gaze is a little bit unsteady).

“What’s going on?” Kate whispers and puts down her book bag.

“We hate the military,” Susan replies.

“Okay.”

“We also hate Tony Stark again.”

“Did we ever stop?”

“But where was he today?” Susan wails. “He’s supposed to protect people!”

“… Like the military?”

“EXACTLY!” Mom bellows, turning her pointing finger from the TV to the girls. “You can’t expect anyone to look out for you anymore.”

Dad finally thinks of something witty to say.

“I think Stark counts as a private contractor in this regard,” he muses. “Not to be counted on unless there is profit involved.”

Like we are any different, Kate thinks.

“Superheroes can’t work for profit!” Susan says and bangs her fist on the table, still high on her caffeine rush.

“Oh Susan please, Stark of all people is no _superhero_ ,” Mom objects, while Dad simply looks as insulted as his wife sounds.

“He’s a bourgeois hero,” Kate concludes quietly, slipping into her bedroom instead.

It has been just another day in New York. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, a flashback chapter~ Covering Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Hulk!
> 
> There are so many people in the Marvel universe whose interactions with Kate I'm dying to see, but I have a special hang up on her relationship/opinion of Tony Stark since they _must have_ met somehow due to moving in the same super rich social circles, right?! I also love rich hypocrites throwing shade on other rich hypocrites. Yes. 
> 
> I have some chapters thought out that would probably work regardless of what happens next in canon, but also a few that don't, and generally I feel like Age of Ultron will shake things up a lot, so I think I'll wait to publish until after that comes out. Thanks for the support so far!
> 
> PS. Maybe the list of billionaires you've met would be pretty long, period, but on a similar theme: http://shop.archiegrand.com/consultants-i-met-and-liked--cool-notebook-p-338-c-144.aspx


	5. The sidekicks we wish we could've been

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Typical bad guy shenanigans, very Hydra-esque. It’s not like you to let that go by without repercussions. Or have you abandoned your ways, Kate? Has the Bed-Stuy Hawkeye abandoned her post?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that chapters 2 and 3 have been updated as of July 26, 2015. Please go back and re-read before you proceed!

”Kate, I think we’ve got ourselves another quiet one,” Tricia leans over to tell her colleague. She puts another generous serving of Shepherd’s Pie on a plate and hands it along to Kate.

“Where?” Kate asks as she puts creamed spinach and carrots on the same plate before reaching across the counter and giving it to the woman first in line with a smile.

“Sixth table to the far right. Sits alone, hiding beneath a baseball cap.”

Tricia leans away again and fills up a new plate. Kate stands on her toes and takes a quick glance out over the tables to spot the man Tricia’s talking about, and keeps serving vegetables automatically.

She knows the drill, she knows every drill at the soup kitchen, she’s been coming here for five years now, in the beginning together with her mom and sister and now only her.

It’s okay. The other volunteers, Tricia, Angelica and the others, are all the same and they get a lot of regulars who knows them all by name. There’s a very familiar, homely feeling to coming here on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

Kate is eighteen and trying to build a new family for herself as an adult.

 

When the new semester begins in September, Kate is finally released from her duties at Bishop Publishing, to the great relief and delight of her co-workers and herself. As promised, she makes a greater effort at school this year, and as she had hoped, the effort come to her easier.

She starts volunteering at her mother’s soup kitchen on a regular basis again, grateful for the pretense that a Bishop should contribute hands on to the work of the Eleanor Bishop Foundation. Good good-will, her father agrees.

Her afternoons and evenings there usually consists of cooking and serving food, doing dishes and cleaning, but more and more she learns new tasks and talks to the guests longer. A shelter that offers showers and warm beds has recently been added, and Kate will help usher the extra needy there.

It’s a grateful job, she thinks as strangers’ eyes lights up, a way to help that doesn’t involve bruising her knuckles or making people upset. A win-win situation.

And sometimes she’ll notice the quiet types, not speaking and in some cases, not hearing either. Kate would speak to them in sign language and boy, did something happen to a person when they returned to the world of the communicating again. Some were hearing and just quiet by nature, but a few she was able to help. Made it feel a little bit more worth it, for Kate personally.

This was such a night, and when it is time for her break, Kate gets herself a plastic glass of water and walks out into the canteen towards the man Tricia had pointed out earlier. He wears rough clothes that look haphazard and ill-fitting enough to not actually belong to him, and he sits with his shoulders squared and his head bent down, avoiding to be seen when out in plain sight.

“Hello,” Kate says slowly. “Do you mind if I sit?”

The man doesn’t answer and keeps chewing his food. He’s alert and Kate knows he’s fully aware of her presence. She sits down slowly.

“Can you hear me?” she asks, articulating her words in the best and most understandable way she can. Personal experience has helped differing between what hearing people judge to be “clear speech” and what hard-of-hearing people know to be.

The man doesn’t answer and Kate takes a better look at him. He has long, dark hair that he keeps in such a way that it shields his face. He has a half-grown beard, also kept so that his facial features are hard to tell while simultaneously being unremarkable enough to not make him recognizable. What little she can make out of his face is maybe almost familiar, maybe almost handsome.

“Can you hear me?” Kate repeats, in sign language this time.

The man freezes with his fork halfway to his mouth, stops chewing. The cap is drawn so far down that Kate can’t quite catch his eyes, but she knows he’s watching her now.

He nods once, then continues eating.

Kate nods, interprets his answer as both a yes and a no; maybe he is hearing, but he reacted to her signing. So next time she speaks, she uses both languages at the same time.

“I’m Kate. If you ever need anything, you can always ask me.” She tells him what she tells everyone who is new. “There are showers and beds at the shelter if you need them, and food is served three times a day. You’re welcome anytime you like.”

He continues eating in silence, watching her. She’s not sure which language he’s understanding, but it’s at least one of them and she could use the simultaneous practice.

There’s a fine line between offering help and overstepping your boundaries, so she rises again.

“Don’t be afraid to talk to me,” she says and smiles. “See you around.”

The man maybe nods again, and Kate walks back to the kitchen.

“How’d it go?” Tricia asks as she carries a new food tray out to the counter.

“OK. Don’t think he’s deaf, just quiet. Speak slowly, and you’ll be fine.”

“Always good to make sure,” Tricia nods.

“I think he’s a vet, though,” Kate says as they take up their positions from before. “He’s got a prosthetic arm.”

 

2.13 AM: “Kate, call me asap!”

2.37 AM: “KATE”

3.04 AM: “You really need to call me NOW or else!”

“Or else what, Kaplan?” Kate groans into her phone as the third vibration finally wakes her up. “It’s not a humane time of the day yet, what could possibly be worse than being awake?” She struggles to put one of her hearing aids in, and manages to flick it on in time for Billy’s answer.

“Kate, I found something!” he says excitedly in a hush, meaning that he is at home (thank God for that), not wanting to wake up his parents.

By “found something” Kate suspects he means something in the S.H.I.E.L.D. records; he and Teddy have been scouring them for months now and every now and then they find something very important that requires Kate’s attention. Not 3 am-important though, not until now.

“It’s about the super soldier project…” Billy begins and Kate plants her head face down and yells silently in her pillow.

“Kaplaaaaan, I am up to my ears already in unwanted info on the super soldier project, and every other little aspect of Steve Rogers’s life – anything else and it’ll be justified to arrest me for stalking. I don’t work on the book anymore! Don’t tell me, please.”

“It’s not about Rogers,” Billy whispers. “It’s about the _other_ Captain America.”

Kate vaguely remembers another book from the “trash” box at the office. It was maybe the most dismissed theory among the research team and it hadn’t interested her very much either.

“He’s not real,” she murmurs on autopilot, rolling over and glancing at her alarm clock. Less than three hours sleep left if she hung up right now.

“He _is!_ ” Billy insists. “I found the files, I found him!”

“You’ve met the original Captain America?”

“I found his grandson,” Billy clarifies. “I’m going to meet him, tomorrow. Please come with me?”

“Why are we friends?” Kate laments, looking at the vague stars she can see through her window.

“Because I love you and know that nothing would satisfy you more than proving to that worthless editor that the original Captain America is real,” Billy says with a bit more confidence than is natural. He obviously practiced this line before she called, the clever little shit.

“I have school, then soup kitchen duty tomorrow.”

“I’ll reschedule for Wednesday!”

“Mm.”

“You’re the best, Kate.”

“ _Mmm!_ ”

“Love you, bye!”

“Get some sleep, nerd.”

 

It’s actually Teddy who meets Kate at the subway station on Wednesday. To her dismay, Kate didn’t have any time to change out of her uniform before getting here (of course, getting detention was a cause of dismay in of itself but this was certainly the most negative fallout of today’s punishment) and so was now about to meet some stranger to discuss what was at best a conspiracy and at worst, a real fucking tragedy and she’d arrive at that meeting wearing blue tartan and knee socks. Classy.

“I don’t know what kind of proof any of us really have for this,” she says as they board a Bronx bound train. “And even if we did, I’m not sure we should meddle in it.”

“It’s proof enough,” Teddy says confidently. “They’ve scrubbed most of it out but with a witness to boot…”

“An alleged grandson of an alleged witness.”

Teddy turns and faces her, wearing a concerned frown.

“Illegal experimentation and exploitation of military personnel,” he says matter-of-factly. “Typical bad guy shenanigans, very Hydra-esque. It’s not like you to let that go by without repercussions. Or have you abandoned your ways, Kate? Has the Bed-Stuy Hawkeye abandoned her post?”

Kate gives Teddy a long and hard look.

“I have never ever called myself that.”

“So? We call you that.”

“You and Billy are not authorities on the matter.”

“If we were, we’d be a hell of a lot better authorities than the ones in charge of the other Hawkeye.”

Kate squirms, stares out the window opposite. She thought her case of vigilante justice was bad, but the boys had it worse. Well. Not as bad as that nut-job downtown who kept it more local than even she did, but he must have some kind of problem.

“You know I went down to DC,” she sighs. “Tagged along with the book team, squirmed our way around with the other paps and tried scavenging around the literal S.H.I.E.L.D. wreck.”

“It was on national television.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t stand at that riverbank-turned-crater-bigger-than-Ground-Zero!” Kate looks at Teddy again, pleading. “These guys are too big for us.”

Teddy sits silent for another minute when the train slows down at their stop. Billy’s on a bench on the platform, waiting for them. Just before Teddy rises, he says:

“Cap stood up to them.”

Kate follows closely behind, speaking more to herself than to Teddy;

“Captain America ain’t here right now.”

 

“Kate’s doubting our intel,” Teddy greets his boyfriend before he pulls him in for a hug.

“We’ve shown you,” Billy says over Teddy’s shoulder.

“Repeatedly,” Teddy adds.

“Repeated exposure doesn’t add credibility in this case,” Kate huffs back. To be a bit more clear: it’s not that she can’t believe it, it’s that she doesn’t want to. A vague but most likely large number of soldiers, both enlisted and drafted, picked for a dangerous experiment based on one common denominator: their disposableness. Hadn’t the army, the state, S.H.I.EL.D. done plenty of heinous things already? Was enough never enough? If you thought about it, the fact that they’d tried (and succeeded) in human enhancement once was bad, and this was worse.

Turns out that their meeting spot is a Starbucks.

I love the taste of torture and mutilation with my afternoon Frappuccino, Kate thinks miserably. Is this her job? Can she quit it? Is there a way, she can go back – just, back, to simple things like keeping the mob off her doorstep? Can she be just a local nut-job minding her own business and ten blocks? She should track down the Hell’s Kitchen dude, see how he does it.

The door opens, and the boys look over.

Please lie to me, Kate wishes wholeheartedly as a guy their age with a backpack approaches their booth. She’ll never wish this of a boy ever again, she thinks.

“Elijah?” Billy asks, holding his nerves somewhat under control.

“Eli,” the boy answers. “You Billy?”                                                                                      

“Yup. This is Teddy-“

“Hi.”

“And this is Kate.” Here Billy draws a deep breath. “She’ll help us.”

Kate doesn’t say anything, just looks down at her coffee with a deadpan expression and empties the cup.

“Apparently,” she says curtly and looks at Eli, who takes a seat across from her, eyebrows slightly raised.

“With what? I thought you just wanted to know my granddad’s story. She’s got anything to add to that?”

Billy’s nervousness seems to have been subdued by his excitement, because now he leans forward with a gleam in his eyes that Kate finds worrisome.

“She’s got a way to tell it.”

Kate looks at Teddy, who shrugs apologetically. He’s right – she should definitely have seen this coming.

Eli takes a good look at her.

“Tell it how and to whom?”

She’s in deep water and all she can do is swim.

“Through commercial non-fiction, maybe, and to everyone or no one, depending on that maybe,” Kate replies. “I… work for Bishop Publishing,” is the semi-truth she decides to go with.

“You’re writing a book about Captain America,” Eli states. “For the centenary.”

“About one of them, at least.”

“The second one, right?” Teddy asks, trying to get their real conversation going.

“Oh no, the white man came first, for once,” Eli says nonchalantly and takes a sip of the coffee Billy had bought him beforehand. “A one-hit wonder, followed by…” The metaphor is left unfinished.

“Failures?” Teddy asks. His voice is soft but there’s no way around the cruel word.

Eli looks at him both glum and harsh, but he doesn’t protest. It’s just hard to say it.

“I found a file on Isaiah Bradley,” Billy says quietly. “Mission reports, a medical journal… he had a subject number that had been censored but… it had three digits, alright.”

Kate pulls a face.

“Granddad pulled through, not many others did,” Eli continues the story. “They used him for whatever they could, for whatever they hoped. Again, again and again, regardless of the success.” He doesn’t sound sad. There’s no anger. Hardly even bitterness. Almost like he’s tired, and reluctantly accepting in a “no use crying for spilled lives” kind of way. He’s become too used to it.

“Did they kill him?” Kate asks bluntly.

“No,” Eli replies and looks her straight in the eyes. “Buried him nonetheless.”

“Buried him is an understatement, going by the encryptions and censoring on this file. I still haven’t found anything on any of the other subjects!” If Billy sounds exasperated, it’s because he probably is. He wants to get to the truth of it, wants to bring it to light, wants justice for lack of a better word. It’s a mission for him, Kate realizes as she looks at the printed pages in his hands. Billy looks at Eli and pushes them his way.

Eli watches the papers in front of them, but doesn’t pick him up. His eyes move slowly up to Kate’s instead.

For Eli it’s not a mission, it’s his own biography.

“How come you’re telling us this?” Bluntness was always Kate’s forte. “We are just a bunch of kids from Manhattan who found you online and want to tell _your_ grandfather’s story. Why would you trust us?”

Eli keeps his eyes solely on Kate.

“Because others do. Do you think you’re the first people to come asking? The first people I’m telling? We’ve been telling this story for generations. It’s not an exaggeration, my whole extended family knows. The whole neighborhood. To you, maybe, it’s an urban myth – but it’s reality here. Captain Afro-American is black history that other people don’t get to hear.”

“Because they don’t want to hear it,” says Teddy.

Eli makes a humming noise in reply.

Kate leans back in her chair, stares at the ceiling. He’s right. He doesn’t need an insider to tell him that white America is selective in their reading, he doesn’t need an insider to tell him that this story can’t be told for that very reason.

“There’s nothing she can do about it.” It's Eli speaking.

All three boys are looking at her. Kate lowers her gaze again.

“Nope,” she says flatly.

Billy protests, puffs himself up and starts arguing in a hushed voice. He can’t accept that, _we_ can’t accept that.

There are so many unacceptable things in this world, Billy Kaplan, so many. I’m glad you don’t even know half of them, Kate thinks.

She reaches out her arm towards Eli to shake his hand.

“There are other things to do.”

Bed-Stuy was not enough for her after all.

 

_“You’re not a weapon, Kate.”_

She stands in front of her mirror later that night, her hearing aids off, just un-assisted pure her staring back. She brushes her teeth and Clint’s words ring in her ears.

No, and she’s not a soldier either. She built herself, made herself this way and what was taken was not taken to empower her and endanger others, rather the other way around.

And when what you are not isn’t good enough, what happens to you? What do they add to make the equation work, to make it worth it?

 

The next night, Tricia pops her head in the pantry while Kate is swabbing the floor.

“Kate, your vet is back,” she announces and is gone.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lo and behold, I am back! I was really stuck with this fic after Age of Ultron (I wasn't the only one, though, was I?) and then a reader's comment reminded me that it had been more than four months since my last update... OTL
> 
> But here it is! We're still dealing with CA:TWS aftermath, and a tiny mention of Daredevil. I have chapters for Ultron and Ant-Man (!) respectively planned out and hope to finish them before school starts in September. You definitely won't have to wait four months again. :)
> 
> I have a playlist for this fic almost done, so expect that shortly too. Enjoy!


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